Press is reporting John Brennan is soon to be scheduled to meet with AG Barr. Could we be reaching the indictment stage finally? Scott Johnston, a regular viewer and commenter requested this update from Brad, so here it is for you, Scott, and all other viewers.
Brad Johnson is a retired Senior CIA Officer and Chief of Station who now devotes his life to his non-profit Americans for Intelligence Reform. We invite you to subscribe and support us and welcome your comments.
https://youtu.be/dJlbw5zp2bo
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brad johnson august the 5th of 2020
00:03
we have done a couple of segments about
00:06
the peculiar proxy war
00:10
that appears to be taking place between
00:13
a
00:14
sort of turkish backed azerbaijan
00:16
against a russian-backed
00:19
armenia what are the developments last i
00:23
heard azerbaijan was threatening
00:25
to bomb nuclear power plants in armenia
00:27
which
00:28
strikes me as a pretty harsh thing to do
00:32
yeah they’re they’re looking for
00:33
weaknesses and that’s that’s a huge
00:35
both strategic and economic uh
00:39
target and uh of course it’s a nuclear
00:42
power plant that’s
00:44
that presents other dangers as well by
00:46
bombing that i don’t know what
00:47
particular type it is but
00:49
it’s probably the russian uh russian
00:51
style
00:52
nuclear power plant which are far more
00:54
susceptible to being
00:55
you know dirty if if destroyed so it
00:58
would present a danger and
01:00
that’s the source of almost not all but
01:03
of the vast majority of
01:05
the electricity in armenia so it is
01:08
it would be you know do a great deal of
01:10
damage so
01:11
that’s posturing so far i don’t know
01:13
however on that score
01:15
this as what we talked about last time
01:17
was that there now uh
01:18
turkey and azerbaijan on the one side
01:21
are doing military exercises and those
01:23
military exercises are going from
01:26
baku the capital of azerbaijan right up
01:28
to the border of
01:29
this area that’s known as
01:31
nagorno-karabakh the disputed
01:33
region now what has happened here as
01:36
as we did mentioned before russia has a
01:39
base in
01:40
armenia and at that base they do have
01:42
aircraft i don’t know the full
01:44
array of aircraft that are available to
01:46
the armenians or by
01:48
by use of the russians to support
01:50
armenia but so far there’s been
01:53
quite a few little battles i mean it’s
01:54
almost an everyday thing where they’re
01:56
shooting back and forth and back and
01:58
forth at each other sometimes it grows
02:00
to be a little bit bigger of a of a
02:03
battle where they’re using
02:04
artillery and things like that but for
02:06
the most part it’s standoff of
02:08
of that thing shooting at each other
02:10
over a distance artillery and those
02:12
sorts of things
02:13
however now turkey has just brought uh
02:16
aircraft
02:17
fighter jets f-16 which
02:20
is not their best aircraft but it’s
02:22
still a good aircraft
02:23
uh into azerbaijan as part of these
02:26
exercises
02:27
oddly enough i mean this um azerbaijan
02:31
has a russian
02:32
fleet of aircraft too and they’re
02:33
looking at
02:35
updating some some aircraft buying it
02:38
from russia
02:39
and yet so now they’d be in a position
02:41
where these russian aircraft and armenia
02:43
would be possibly uh squaring off
02:45
against azerbaijani
02:48
russian aircraft uh probably the russian
02:50
pilots would be superior having more
02:52
time in the air with these sorts of
02:53
things but don’t know
02:54
uh at any rate the the important fact
02:56
here now is this has again
02:58
gone up another level because of these
03:00
exercises that are taking place
03:02
and the particularly the fighter jets
03:04
that turkey has brought into the area
03:07
uh it’s not a thing of whether conflict
03:10
will take place or not
03:12
or even really win because conflict is
03:14
taking place now
03:15
every day and so it’s just a question of
03:19
how big will it grow and now you’ve got
03:21
the belligerents facing off against each
03:24
other with armenian
03:25
azerbaijan and then now they’re backed
03:27
by turkey and
03:28
russia uh respectively and it’s kind of
03:31
an interesting
03:32
thing how this is going to play out and
03:33
i will say
03:35
these reports with the updates on turkey
03:37
and azerbaijan get a lot of
03:39
uh interesting comments on it on youtube
03:42
and the different sites that this goes
03:43
out on
03:44
and a lot of argument back and forth on
03:46
who uh owned
03:48
the territory there of nagorno-karabakh
03:50
first
03:51
and of course the armenians say armenia
03:53
did and the turks say the turks did and
03:55
so on but
03:56
i think that is a the perfect reflection
03:59
of how this just
04:00
is not going to be settled uh
04:01
diplomatically or peacefully this i
04:04
this is one of those places where it’s
04:05
going to be a limited regional thing
04:07
but i think there’s zero question that
04:08
this is going to uh ex
04:11
expand into a wider conflict where our
04:14
armenia and azerbaijan are
04:16
are essentially at war now how it goes
04:18
which way i mean
04:20
so difficult to predict based on
04:22
leadership and equipment at the time and
04:23
all of that but
04:24
i think this is going to go to conflict
04:26
and i think nagorno-kor carl baugh is
04:28
going to be an
04:29
absolute war zone and i wouldn’t be
04:31
surprised if that doesn’t happen fairly
04:33
quickly so
04:34
that’s the update keep an eye on it it
04:36
is a it is a hot spot in the world
04:38
where it’s probably again regional
04:41
doesn’t have that much impact on
04:42
most of the west at least immediately if
04:45
it doesn’t go much beyond where it’s
04:47
where it looks like it’s going to head
04:48
now just being regional
04:49
uh but war of the world’s not good for
04:51
anybody and i think that’s what’s
04:53
that’s probably one of the foremost
04:55
places that i think can turn really hot
04:57
in the short term you know i have a
05:00
really hard time thinking that the
05:02
russians
05:03
would sell aircraft to azerbaijan
05:07
with the capability of matching their
05:09
own
05:10
i would like to think that also even the
05:12
americans when they’re selling certain
05:13
nato partners
05:16
aircraft that they they’re limited in
05:18
some way so that they can’t
05:20
i i would imagine that that’d be the
05:21
case wouldn’t you
05:24
you know it’s a funny world excuse me in
05:26
in those ways and of course
05:28
the russians are always looking to make
05:30
money and azerbaijan has oil so i’m sure
05:32
they’ve got the hard currency to
05:34
pay for these sorts of things so i think
05:36
the russians are thinking about you know
05:38
money and there are differences pilots
05:42
mean everything in an aircraft if you’re
05:43
fighting the same two aircraft against
05:45
each other
05:46
precisely the same two aircraft uh and
05:49
one set of pilots is experienced and
05:50
well trained and all that they’re going
05:52
to win every time
05:53
but there are also equipment packages
05:54
that go in these aircraft and
05:56
they’re probably i don’t know this but i
05:59
wouldn’t think they would sell
06:00
necessarily
06:01
their frontline equipment package on
06:04
aircraft to a place like azerbaijan
06:06
azerbaijan doesn’t need that level which
06:10
is a lot more expensive
06:11
so probably even if the same aircraft
06:13
were flying against each other the
06:15
russians would have every advantage
06:16
better pilots better trained pilots and
06:18
also better equipment packages
06:20
in those aircraft to take out the
06:22
azerbaijani versions so
06:24
i i don’t think it would be realistic
06:26
for azerbaijan to go
06:28
toe-to-toe without turkey’s backing then
06:30
it would be a different thing
06:31
turkey i think they’ve got some good
06:33
pilots as well so it’d be
06:35
it would be a far more dangerous
06:38
war in the sense of being able to expand
06:40
if turkey and russia
06:41
both are directly involved which they
06:43
appear to be
06:44
now so uh we’ll see
06:47
it’s a dangerous area
07:02
[Music]
07:13
you
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